Well I don't think I'm going to read post-apocalypse fiction in the same way ever again. It's set at a time when Pitcairn Island is sinking, which is expected to kick off a chain of cataclysmic events (read: the end of the world). From a style point of view it's fascinating and ambitious. Layered. Meta. Super self-aware. But pace wise it had (forgivable) slow spots (not easy to write a character who can't remember anything without computer help).

Oh lordy this made me cry

This is brilliant... in a cold, glittering diamond sort of way. I love that Proulx was brave enough to tackle such a huge project. Writing about deforestation, over generations, is no small thing. But I'm going to be honest, this was hard going. It felt like she hated every character she wrote about. It was all so brutal and cold. In the end I was just waiting to find out how she kills each one off. And oh, there were some very creative deaths...

Seriously this book should be subtitled A Million Ways to Die in the West

Today's burning question: who's more brutal, the GoT scriptwriters or Annie Proulx?

"Everything is true," he said. "Everything anybody has ever thought is true."

#coverart #1993 #awyeah

Some of the descriptions of motherhood are bang on, and it's interesting to read a disaster/post apocalypse story from a mother's POV. But... it's pretty floaty. The snippets of myth in italics are pretentious. The single initial names are confusing. And why would you care about any of it when the main character mother doesn't seem to either?

"Of all the flops, this is the floppiest. We come here, we get chased about by crazy machines and we get told to go home again by slightly less crazy machines."

Which about sums it up. But hang in there for the "oh Vaygan, oh Vaygan" alien love affair

"Joan shook her head. ‘It sounds complicated to me. I‘m afraid I‘m not very good at understanding things like that.‘ "

I can see why they re-released this. Our relationship to machines, to nature, relentless acquisition, conquest... But boy oh boy. I could do without all the monologues on women being crap at technology ?

"Call someone, I tell myself.
The phone beats me to it. It rings. Maybe this is the answer I‘ve been waiting for.
I pick it up and shove it to my ear. It hurts but I listen hard. Unfortunately, it‘s my mother."

Fark. The whimsy. I just don't know if I can take anymore...

"Happy endings. Too many to count."

"Isn't every painting really an attempt to close the distance between the small world of the canvas and the vast world out there?"

Justin Paton on Vija Celmins' painting Night Sky no11

The Nigerian setting gave this sci-fi story an interesting flavour, and staying (mostly) on earth was also a bit different to most. There are neat ideas in here. But that's only if you can hang in there through some pretty clunky plot gear changes, and ignore a host of pretty two dimensional characters (all the women, this book is definitely a sausage fest)

Her breakthrough, Burial Rites, was such a powerful description of a place and time: the turf hovels with their bladder skin windows is an image that's hard to shake. But it‘s like she got bogged down in research this time round and lost sight of the story.

It‘s too hard to understand the characters and their belief in fairies and folk cures. I wonder if writing the first half as magic realism would have helped to sweep readers into that world?

These shorts are all brilliant studies in empathy and the dark twists of the psyche. He picks the fairytale characters we think we know (or the footnotes, the ones we overlook) and redraws them. Beauty thinks she‘s got game, Rumpelstiltskin just wants to be a father. The brother left with a swan's wing for an arm struggles after the fairytale ends. It‘s sure dark. But Cunningham is sharp, and knows better than to let the light go out completely.

Uprooted was pitched to me as a clever modern fairytale. Ok, I thought, more Angela Carter, let‘s go. Except it‘s not. It‘s a fantasy book. I‘m not above a bit of YA, so that‘s not a critique. And it's good to see a fantasy book with a not at all hot female protagonist. But if you're into reinventing fairytales, try Michael Cunningham‘s Wild Swans instead.

Schlink makes me paranoid. Another book about making sense of the past, untangling threads, confronting your own failings. Is that what's in store? Am I just going to be one big stew of regret and late-onset guilt when I'm in the nursing home??